Movies like Behind the Curtain (2025)
The best movies like Behind the Curtain (2025) are The Short History of the Long Road (2019), Hounddog (2008) and The Last Showgirl (2024). If Behind the Curtain hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedShakespeare in Love (1998)6.8/10 from 3,325 votes
- NewestAtropia (2025)Released 2025
The Short History of the Long Road (2019)
Nola grew up living in a van with her father, Clint—two nomads against the world. When tragedy strikes, Nola must confront the reality of life on the road alone, learning to own her grief, her past, and her new destination.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHounddog (2008)
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Last Showgirl (2024)
When the glittering Las Vegas revue she has headlined for decades announces it will soon close, a glamorous showgirl must reconcile with the decisions she’s made and the community she has built as she plans her next act.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSkin (2009)
Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Believe in Unicorns (2015)
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTeen Spirit (2019)
A shy teenager living on the Isle of Wight dreams of pop stardom. With the help of an unlikely mentor, she enters a singing competition that will test her integrity, talent, and ambition.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGracie (2007)
A teenager faces an uphill battle when she fights to give women the opportunity to play competitive soccer.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Girl in the Book (2015)
The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisIron Jawed Angels (2004)
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhite Angel (2007)
The film is a love story. However, it is not a story about the love between two people, but rather a story about the love and affection that a group of people feel for life and for each other. The film depicts all kinds of love, from east to west, from schoolchildren to villagers, from young to old, in both an emotional and humorous way.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAll Together Now (2020)
An optimistic, talented teen clings to a huge secret: she's homeless and living on a school bus. When tragedy strikes, can she learn to accept a helping hand?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Trials of Cate McCall (2013)
In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBastard Out of Carolina (1996)
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBroke (2025)
A bronc rider in denial about his fading rodeo career battles against brain injury and a sudden blizzard while reflecting on how it became so difficult to achieve his dreams.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisClouds of May (1999)
An aspiring filmmaker visits his parents and begins to devise a movie. Amidst creating and casting for the film, he encounters with family & friends who struggle with their own problems, dreams and life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this1 Chance 2 Dance (2014)
When a 17-year old aspiring dancer is uprooted in her high school senior year, she finds herself divided between two boys, and she will have one last shot at making her dream a reality.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGirlfight (2000)
Diana Guzman, a troubled Brooklyn teenager, decides to channel her aggression by training to become a boxer, all while keeping it a secret from her father.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIntroducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999)
An acclaimed stage performer, Dorothy still struggled with the challenge of her color, in a time that wouldn't let some stars in by the front door. Yet against the odds she beat out many more famous rivals for the role of "Carmen Jones", becoming the first black woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Marriages and affairs would break her heart, but her heart was strong. Seductive and easily seduced, she was born to be a star - with all the glory and all the pain of being loved, abused, cheated, glorified, undermined and undefeated. Here was a woman who wouldn't wait in the wings. Halle Berry stars as Dorothy Dandrige.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMadeline's Madeline (2018)
Madeline has become an integral part of a prestigious physical theater troupe. When the workshop's ambitious director pushes the teenager to weave her rich interior world and troubled history with her mother into their collective art, the lines between performance and reality begin to blur. The resulting battle between imagination and appropriation rips out of the rehearsal space and through all three women's lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisGod's Not Dead (2014)
After he refuses to disavow his faith, a devout Christian student must prove the existence of God or else his college philosophy professor will fail him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLost Isolation (2022)
A depressed man finds himself in a silent nightmare of self-reflection.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
A Romance of Wastdale (1921)
David Gordon is in love and engaged to be married to Kate Nugent. But the sinister figure of Austen Hawke, Gordon's rival, threatens to eclipse the wedding and wreck Gordon's one chance of true happiness. Gordon will throw Austen over a cliff in a climbing excursion in the Scafell Pike area, but finally he will find all was a dream. A vintage love story and a tale of blackmail based on A.E.W. Mason’s book. The film was produced by Stoll Pictures, Britain's biggest studio of the silent era and features Milton Rosmer.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
An Artist's Soul (2025)
Squeezing out every drop of opportunity she has left, a young actress in the final rounds of her dream drama school audition is willing to risk and sacrifice everything (and everyone) to get what she desires.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Bird Trap (TBA)
Hala, an 8-year-old girl, lives a difficult life with her brother Amir and their cruel stepmother. To escape her painful reality, Hala retreats into a fantasy world, finding solace from the harshness around her. However, one question continues to haunt her: Do the dead fly?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Atropia (2025)
When an aspiring actress in a military role-playing facility falls in love with a soldier cast as an insurgent, their unsimulated emotions threaten to derail the performance.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Young William Shakespeare is forced to stage his latest comedy, 'Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter', before it's even written. When lovely noblewoman Viola de Lesseps auditions for a role, they fall into forbidden love — and Shakespeare's play finds a new life (and title). As their relationship intensifies, the comedy soon transforms into tragedy.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPromised Land: A Musical (1987)
To find out whether he has any talent, Danny, a Hollywood actor going nowhere fast, sets off in pursuit of Irving J. Schwartz, the greatest agent in the world. In a frenzy of musical numbers and disguises, Danny makes his way through the promised land toward discovery of who he is and what it takes to be an actor
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Aurinko in Adagio (2021)
Isolated from society in a deserted delta community with his austere father, a child musical prodigy prepares for the audition of a lifetime while navigating a newfound skill in ancestral dreaming.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Lullaby (2023)
In order to fulfil her dream of becoming a musician, a cat from the countryside named Ocon must face the fears and anxieties of performing in front of the glamorous city animals.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Bodywork (2022)
A theater actor with crippling body image insecurities must face his greatest fears when he is asked to perform nude on stage in his dream role.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Behind the Curtain?
The closest matches to Behind the Curtain are The Short History of the Long Road (2019), Hounddog (2008) and The Last Showgirl (2024). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Behind the Curtain?
Start with The Short History of the Long Road (2019), the closest match to Behind the Curtain.
What is the highest-rated movie like Behind the Curtain?
Shakespeare in Love (1998), rated 6.8/10 by 3,325 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Behind the Curtain?
Atropia (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to Behind the Curtain chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Behind the Curtain, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.